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Saturday, February 08, 2014

Listening to Indonesian politicians campaigning for this year's
elections you could be forgiven for thinking that freedom of religion is
not a problem in the country with the world's largest Muslim population
and that all is well when it comes to interfaith relations.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Just because freedom of religion rarely makes an election theme
doesn't mean that everything is all right. And don't take the word of
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono either, who in May received an award
from the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation for promoting
"religious tolerance".

Speak instead with the followers of Ahmadiyah, the Muslim Shias,
various Christian denominations and other minority religious
communities. They will tell you, mostly in private, of their fears along
with stories of persecution and harassment, sometimes involving
violence by hard-line Islamic groups, and often with the tacit approval
of the government.

To religious minorities, the fact that no politician has bothered to
take up the issue and that the majority of Sunni Muslims are keeping
silent, Indonesia is anything but tolerant. The problem is growing due
to this official and public denial in Indonesia that it even exists.

The religious minorities also know they are missing out on the
opportunity to make their case before the nation during this election
year because most politicians would consciously avoid talking about
religious freedom in their campaigns.

Indonesians will be voting twice this year, first for their
representatives in April and second for their president in July. A new
government will be installed October.

This will be the nation's fourth democratic election since it
deposed strongman Suharto in 1998. Indonesia has since won accolades as
one of the few successful countries to make the transition from
authoritarianism to democracy.

Its leaders often boast that Indonesia is the world's third largest
democracy after India and the United States, and the largest democracy
among Muslim-majority countries. Religious tolerance has even been
touted as one of the recipes for the country's success.

Indonesian diplomats have been involved in establishing and
promoting interfaith dialogues at bilateral, regional and international
levels. In August, Indonesia will be sure to showcase its democracy and
religious tolerance when it hosts the annual meeting of the UN Alliance
of Civilizations.

Indonesia's democracy, however, has one big flaw: It is quickly
turning into a simple majority rule, and this means that when it comes
to religious issues, the voices of religious minorities are drowned out
by the voice, or even the silence, of the Muslim majority.

While religious moderation still prevails, religious minorities feel
that often the Muslim majority stretches their tolerance too far to
include tolerating religious intolerance. Their silence in the face of
reported religious persecution is disturbing.

Muslims, predominantly Sunnis, make up about 86% of Indonesia's population of 250 million.

Religious minorities coming under persecution have learned that
sometimes it is better to keep silent and not draw too much public
attention to themselves. In some instances, those who have spoken out
against their ill-treatment have earned the wrath of more Muslims and
the government.

Typically the victims were blamed and came off worse. Some
Ahmadiyah, Shiah and Christian leaders have gone to jail on various
pretexts. Charges have ranged from blasphemy for preaching their beliefs
to building permit violations in connection to places of worship. Worst
of all, some religious minorities have been targeted for disturbing the
peace by their mere existence.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Ahmadis have been lingering in
makeshift shelters for years in East Java and West Java because their
homes, schools and mosques have been vandalized or even razed to the
ground by radical Islamic groups.

Dozens of Shia followers in East Java are living in shelters after
they were hounded out of their village in 2012. The provincial
government has told them that they would be able to return on condition
of renouncing their Shia beliefs and "return to the right path".

A Shia leader last year saw his jail term doubled to four years by
the High Court and later upheld by the Supreme Court for spreading his
teachings, something that the court considered blasphemous to the "real
Islam". Two men who led the mob to vandalize his house and attack his
followers in Sampang received eight months imprisonment.

This is a repetition of the 2011 controversial court verdicts that
sentenced an Ahmadiyah follower, whose house in the Cikeusik village in
West Java was raided in a fatal attack, to six months imprisonment, the
same or higher than what the assailants got.

Last year also saw Palti Panjaitan, a priest with the HKBP
Filadelfia Christian church in Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, tried in a
court for "assailing" a Muslim leader who had joined a mob to taunt and
harass him and the Church followers outside his church.

This has resulted in the congregations of HKBP Filadelfia, and that
of GK Yasmin Christian church in Bogor, another township adjacent to
Jakarta, conducting their Sunday prayers outside the Presidential Palace
in Jakarta every week in protest of the government's failure to protect
and uphold their rights to conduct services.

President Yudhoyono has obviously not heard their prayers yet.

In both cases, the local government has refused to reopen their
churches in defiance of Supreme Court rulings that supported the
presence of the church and the right of the people to conduct prayers
there.

Religious minorities in Indonesia may have given up hope on
President Yudhoyono helping their case. But at least they have some
comfort knowing that, come October, a new president will be in power:
Yudhoyono cannot return for a third term.

Freedom of religion may not be an election issue, but no doubt the
new president will be reminded that their oath of office includes a
pledge to uphold the constitution, which clearly stipulates an
obligation to guarantee and protect freedom of religion.

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